Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman – Book Review

 

Publisher’s write-up:

‘What if you tried to stop doing everything, so you could finally get round to what counts?

Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny.

Embrace your limits. Change your life. Discover how to make your four thousand weeks count in 2024.’

Four Thousand Weeks – as the title says, is a book on time management for mortals by the former journalist Oliver Burkeman. Life is finite but our ambitions are not. It is not uncommon to find ourselves feel guilty for not clearing out our “to do lists” or chasing our ambition while doing our daily job – all within the finite life that we have. With hustle culture on the rise, the author tries to make the point that life would be a lot better if we accept that it is finite and we would not be able to achieve everything we intend to.

The title of the book – four thousand weeks is a reference to the average life span of a human being – with 4000 weeks amounting to approximately 77 years. It is split into fourteen chapters, where the author makes his case, as to how the modern world has this obsession over productivity – often tied to capitalism. An example I would give is the efficiency myth at work that the author talks about – that if an employee completes their tasks within the given time, they do not get more time, they are given more tasks. The author gives several contemporary examples, on the unreasonable expectations we have of ourselves and to accept that “settling down” is not bad but is something positive.

I liked the idea of the book, and also the message that the author was trying to convey. I have been through the cycle of “productivity obsession” and thinking of life as a permanent “personality development” quest, feeling guilty every time for simply relaxing. I felt the author also gave several contemporary examples, relatable to the current readership, such as Amazon – and their obsession with having their home page loaded as fast as possible (which is a question of seconds). This is a book that came out in 2021 and I read it in 2025, and thus one thing that is missing from the book is the interactive AI models that we have today.

However, I felt that the book was long and that the point that he wanted to make was already made by the seventh chapter. The title was also a “clickbait” – given he did not talk about the “short lifespan” barring the introduction and it was more about time management and far less about our mortality. On that note, any number put on time would feel short – suppose the title had been 672 000 Hours – people would have had the same level of alarm over the fact that we live less than a million hours.

The appendix, with the ten suggestions on time management, was interesting and I felt they were practical. It was however not aligned with the tone of the book, given the author was telling us to ignore most of the advice related to “time management” from books and influencers and in the end, gave a set of advice himself, like every other author on this subject.

To conclude, I would say that the book is a good read and is helpful if one wants to get out of the obsession with productivity. The book has its flaws, but in the end, the reader has something to take away. On that note, I would award the book a rating of seven on ten.

Rating – 7/10

Have a nice day
Andy

Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell – Book Review

 

Publisher’s write-up:

‘Twenty-five years after the publication of his groundbreaking first book, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand-new volume that reframes the lessons of The Tipping Point in a startling and revealing light.

Why is Miami…Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in twenty-five years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena.

Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world’s most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis. Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of modern world. It’s time we took tipping points seriously.’

Revenge of the Tipping Point is a book from the author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell, who looks back at his book written in the 90s, called The Tipping Point. While I have not read that book, I understood from reading this book that for any major societal changes, there is a ‘tipping point’ after which the phenomenon is normalised and spreads across. While the previous book explored the positive aspects of the tipping point, this book explores the ‘revenge’, the negative consequences of the same tipping point.

The author explains through various stories, such as the health care system in the US, college admissions, covid-19 misinformation; wherein once a tipping point on anti-vax sentiment is reached, it is normalised in the particular community very fast, leading to the reappearance of diseases that were eradicated in the past. Most of the author’s examples are concentrated around the US, many picking up from where the author had left off.

I liked the idea of the book and the book was well written and was made more powerful by adding personal stories of people along with statistics and figures to support the findings. Given I read it in early 2025, many of the examples were relatable given we had just come past the Covid pandemic; something which all of us faced regardless of where we were. Same with many apparent ‘settled issues’ from the 90s, as progress attained, now being reopened by the right-wing culture wars, such as the attack on transgender rights or anti-affirmative action remarks; where even that has reached the same ‘tipping point’ making it acceptable to voice these opinions in public.

That said, I felt the author had a single conclusion in the book, on the tipping point and its effects. That was a point that was made to me by the time I finished the first two chapters but anything beyond that was repetition and to finish the book, I had to put in a lot of effort given I had lost interest in many of the subsequent stories given the point that was made was the same; that a tipping point was reached and it had negative consequences.

This could have been a short essay that could have been added as an addendum in the 25^th anniversary edition of the Tipping Point rather than having a whole book and I can imagine why those who had read the previous book were disappointed by this, because they do not learn anything beyond what had already been expressed in the previous book. While I have not read that book, I had read this book a book club discussion and this seemed to be a unanimous view of those who had read the Tipping Point. Another issue was that the book was heavily US centric and at felt, it fell into the trap of projecting what was happening in the US as universal and applicable to the rest of the world.

To conclude, I felt it was a necessary topic to be discussed given the current political climate with the return of the culture wars and reexamination of what were thought to be settled issues when it comes to attaining rights and liberties after years of activism. However, the point could have been made in a concise manner rather than having such a detailed book. On that note, I would award the book a rating of six on ten.

Rating – 6/10

Have a nice day,
Andy

Kallocain by Karin Boye – Book Review

 

Afin de lire mon avis de lecture en français, cliquez ici

Publisher’s write-up:

‘Written midway between Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the terrible events of the Second World War were unfolding, Kallocain depicts a totalitarian 'World State' which seeks to crush the individual entirely. In this desolate, paranoid landscape of 'police eyes' and 'police ears', the obedient citizen and middle-ranking scientist Leo Kall discovers a drug that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth. But can private thought really be obliterated?’

Kallocain is a dystopian novel written by the Swedish author Karin Boye during the interwar period. The novel is set in a dystopian future where there is a form of a large world government translated in English as ‘World State’; in some ways modelled around the Soviet Union. The author wrote this in the 1930s, when the ideological battle was raging between market-driven individualist model of US and the Soviet collective model and the author presents this world.

The lead character is Leo Kall, a scientist who works for the army of the world state and is a fervent patriot and is convinced that all traitors are to be ‘removed’ from the state. He invents a serum, when injected, forces the person to speak the truth and reveal all their ideas against the state. He names the chemical after himself, as ‘Kallocain’. However, he is also a very insecure character, who is convinced that his wife is in love with his boss Rissen and somehow wants the truth out of her which leads to a lot of problems which forms the crux of the novel.

For me, this novel did not work; and felt that the world that the author had created was too disconnected from reality. I would have been more interested to know how this ‘world state’ operated, but most of the story took place in an interrogation room where Leo administered Kallocain to the wives of soldiers to get information on them. There was no indication on what the event was that led to this consolidation – or any talk on general things that happen every day, such as what the weather was, what was the landscape around, what was it that the people were doing for entertainment (even if it meant watching state propaganda shows), etc.

I felt the story had an interesting idea, especially given the historic context at that time, with certain countries going towards a planned economy and collective society; that the author imagined a dystopian version of that. However, at some point, she was confused between building her world and exploring the insecurities of Leo, and in the end, there was neither.  It is not a long read, however, was a very difficult read for me.

Science-fiction or dystopian novels are not my preferred genre but I felt I gave it a fair chance and for a reader like me, it could have worked more if she had chosen on a particular theme and having the other as a sub-plot that try to equally focus on both. On that note, I award the novel a rating of three on ten.

Rating – 3/10

Have a nice day,
Andy